


I'm So Tired

by WildnessBecomesYou



Category: Ratched (TV)
Genre: F/F, Self Loathing, but this needed to come out of me, honestly the mildolyn is periphery, mild violence, so like here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26795560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildnessBecomesYou/pseuds/WildnessBecomesYou
Summary: Mildred's had a very long few days. She isn't expecting Betsy Bucket to show up where she shouldn't be, and she's so tired.
Relationships: Gwendolyn Briggs/Mildred Ratched, Mildred Ratched & Edmund Tollenson
Comments: 15
Kudos: 71





	I'm So Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said in the tags, this is very lightly Mildolyn, but it felt really necessary to write. 
> 
> Mildred's big watery doe eyes hurt me and now y'all get to feel this pain too!!!!!

It’s been a long day. 

Every day has been long. Every day since the dance, where Edmund betrayed her, where he used Dolly and her impulsive, foolish ways to escape, has been long. 

And Mildred Ratched is tired. 

She’s so tired. Gwendolyn hasn’t spoken to her since the governor’s meeting with Dr Hanover, and she’s worried that she scared Gwendolyn away, or that Gwendolyn wants nothing to do with her now that Edmund is supposed to die, or— 

God, what if she’s hurt? 

But the one good thing about the day being over is that Mildred gets to sleep. Not in a comfortable bed, but it is a bed. The room she rents is tolerable. There’s even a small table-and-couch setup in the side enclave where she can sit and think— and she might do that tonight, try and figure their way out of the latest mess Edmund has made them. 

When she unlocks her door, she’s not expecting to see Betsy Bucket.

“Don’t panic,” the nurse says, “this isn’t what it looks like.”

Mildred stiffens. What does it look like? Does Bucket know about her and Gwendolyn? Had she _done_ something to Gwendolyn? 

“Oh, well, this is what it looks like.” Bucket motions to the side and Mildred’s breath catches in her throat. 

The recorder. The stupid, stupid recorder. Why hadn’t she thrown that away? 

She knows that her breath is heaving in and out, but she doesn’t quite feel like she’s panicking. Actually, she doesn’t quite feel like she’s in her own body. That’s odd.

Bucket looks a little frustrated. “Close the door and sit, please.” 

It takes Mildred a moment to move. Her body doesn’t want to listen at first. But she does, closing the door with a soft _click_ , slowly makes her way over to the bed across from Bucket. She pulls her hood down, trying to soothe her own heartbeat. 

“I think I can help you,” Bucket starts, and it’s oddly soft for what Mildred expected. “But we’re gonna need to start being honest with each other.” 

Mildred feels like she’s being scolded, like she’s a schoolgirl again, like she’s back in one of those awful foster homes. Her fingers dig into her purse and she sets her jaw. When Bucket reaches for the tape, she doesn’t want to hear it. 

Why had she recorded all of this in the first place? 

“I listened to the tape.”

It clicks on.

_“You see, Father, Edmund Tolleson is my brother.”_

Mildred can’t help the rising sense of despair. She wants to curl into herself, to lash out— if she can bend far enough into herself, perhaps all of this will go away and she’ll wake up and she and Edmund will be in a new home, far away from puppets and lingering eyes and too-sweet food; if she can knock the cigarette out of Bucket’s mouth, scare her enough, find her gun, maybe the woman will run far, far away, and she and Edmund can try again. 

Maybe she deserves this. Maybe her life had been doomed from the start. Maybe she and Edmund were broken souls, devils who escaped Hell, didn’t deserve a good family or good love. 

She wants a hand to hold.

_“He wasn’t born a monster.”_

Bucket takes a long drag of smoke and lets it out as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. Mildred doesn’t see how that can be true. She’s barely breathing as is. 

_“Somebody turned him into one.”_

Mildred can feel her already fragile facade falling. She loves her brother. She does. She’d go to the ends of the earth for him, because she believed he felt the same. 

But after Dolly, after Gwendolyn…

She’s not so sure. 

She glances up at Bucket— still smoking— and back at the tape as the Father whimpers. God, what had she become? How could she invoke his name when she— 

_“God bless you, Father.”_

Her breath picks up another increment. She feels like she’s in a speeding car about to crash. This was supposed to be secret, why had she been so stupid, how can she have done this for a stupid boy who wouldn’t even protect her beloved in return— 

The ice pick drives into the skull of the Father on the tape and she flinches, a tiny gasp of air passing her lips, looks up at Bucket. 

“I know what a lobotomy sounds like, Mildred,” Bucket says immediately. “The hammer on the ice pick, the- the wet cracking sound as it pierces the skull and enters the frontal lobe.”

Mildred’s leg is trembling from the effort of keeping her back straight. She pushes down with her toes to try and stop it, closes her eyes against all of this. 

It would have been so easy if Edmund had just followed the plan. Now her life, what meager scraps she’d managed to assemble, was falling apart. 

The tape recorder clicks off and Mildred looks up at Bucket. She’s aware of the woman talking, she can see her lips moving, but she can’t process any of what’s being said. All she can hear is her own heartbeat in an ocean of blood, a gentle voice demanding “Who are you?” 

Her jaw flexes. Bucket’s voice continues, a low drone she can’t parse. Her shoulders come up and down. Her neck aches. Her heart won’t quiet, her head won’t quiet, this is exhausting, can this please be over, can she just go, can it all just stop for a moment— 

“Then that other party would take this information to the police. Which I have not done.” Bucket stamps out her cigarette on an ashtray. “As of yet.” 

Mildred chews her lip. She feels the tears start to roll down her cheeks, and she knows that once this starts, it won’t stop. And there’s no one to hold her, it’ll be just like all the other times she’s let all this catch up to her; she’ll be alone, hugging her own knees, gasping for air like she has a right to breathe it. 

She breaks. Her hand comes up to her eyes. 

She wants a hand to hold. She can give so much love, she knows it, she’s been giving it in the wrong places, but God help her, she can’t take it back once it’s been given. 

She reaches for the bed post and shakes her head. This is too hard. If it could all stop, for just a moment, just to give her a second to breathe and catch up, she’ll have it together again. She can be useful. She can give love. She can be good if someone just gives her the chance. 

But she’d lost that chance, hadn’t she? 

She lets loose a sob. It’s pathetic, but she can’t do anything else. She’s lost everything else. 

“I’m so tired,” she cries, “of all the running an-and all the lying.” The bed post is her anchor now, and she doesn’t know why she’s telling Betsy Bucket this, but it comes tumbling out.

And she is. She’s so tired. The seven hours of sleep are never enough. The work at the hospital is always too much. She’s never outrunning the law, just running beside it. She can’t stop thinking of blue eyes and strawberry blonde curls and red lips that soften into the most tender smile she’s ever seen when she appears—

Or, at least, they used to. 

“The things I’ve done.” She sucks in a breath, white knuckling the post as if it’ll serve any purpose. It’s not enough. It’s too hard. It’s all too hard. 

“I know the difference between right and wrong,” she says, and she almost believes it, “and still I’ve done things that even I cannot believe.” 

And that’s true. She doesn’t understand why she’s done these things. Or she does; it’s all been in the service of love. Perhaps a misguided one, she’s coming to understand, but the only love she’d known before that day she’d learned the lobotomy. 

She covers her face and gasps, and it’s not enough air, her chest is burning. “He’s my brother,” she hisses, as if it’ll make her feel better. “We were treated like animals. Worse than animals, and he saved me from it. He saved my life.” 

So she owes him hers. And she will lose everything for him. 

She feels like she already has. 

“So I made a promise to myself that I would do _whatever_ it took to repay him for that kindness. To free him from a fate I knew he didn’t deserve, no matter what he’d done.”

But he’d hurt Gwendolyn. He’d killed stupid, sweet Dolly. Her life was on the line, and the lives of everyone she cared about, and she had no hand to hold, no one to take the love she was so willing to give. And Gwendolyn wouldn’t talk to her. 

“Now I don’t know what I think he deserves.” 

“Well, he shouldn’t be put to death.”

Mildred glances up, breath stuttering. She hadn’t expected Bucket to say that. She’s aware of Bucket’s voice still going, but she doesn’t parse anything again until Bucket moves to sit next to her. She freezes, trying to stay very still. 

“You’ve been lying a long time, Mildred.” She twitches when Bucket pats her wrist. She supposes the nurse means to comfort her, but it’s disconcerting. 

She begins to breathe again as they continue to talk. She feels like a mess, even after scrubbing her face when Bucket leaves. 

Telling the truth had felt good. It had been a relief, at least, and it had tumbled out of her. Now she’s left feeling hollow, and empty, and cold. And she wants very badly. 

She wants to be held, to be told she’s not a monster, no matter how much she knows it’s true. She wants to feel safe, to feel connected, to feel loved. She wants to fall asleep and wake up to the same face, to sunlight. 

There’s a phone in the office, and she’s willing to brave Louise for just the chance that she can hear Gwendolyn’s voice. She doesn’t care if Gwendolyn is upset, or distant, she just needs to hear her. 

It takes some prodding and scolding and refusal to gossip, but eventually Louise gives the number Gwendolyn left. She takes the phone around the corner and breathes shakily. 

“Hello?” a distinctly male voice answers. Mildred’s stomach drops. 

“H-is Gwendolyn Briggs there?” she asks. She chews on her bottom lip while silence echoes over the phone. 

“No, not now,” the voice says, “would you like to leave a message?” 

“Would— would you just tell her Mildred Ratched called?” She doesn’t miss the slight inhale on the other end. “I think she knows she can reach me at the motel or at the hospital, I’d just—“ she hesitates. “I’d really like to hear from her, that’s all. I’m. I’m a little worried.” 

“Alright,” the voice says. “I’ll let her know.” His voice has softened, and Mildred wonders what that might mean. 

“Thank you,” she sighs. Saying any more would be dangerous, even though she wants to scream what she’s feeling into the phone. She wants to demand this man bring Gwendolyn to her and then make it clear he’s never to come around Gwendolyn again. But she fights all this down. “I— goodbye.”

“Bye now,” he says, and it reminds her of the way Gwendolyn would say it, and her chest aches. 

God, she’s so tired.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm on to requests now. Let me know if you've got more! Currently my brain is very willing to write, and I'm trying to take advantage of the feast while I'm able :)


End file.
